I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Stop Biting That Pencil!

In the brave, new reformy world, teachers will not be allowed to make excuses for a child's difficulty in learning. Which means teachers will have to work around the problems of poverty, poor parenting, hunger, homelessness and the environment.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

"It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin said in an interview. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."

Through much of the 20th century, lead in U.S. paint and gasoline fumes poisoned toddlers as they put contaminated hands in their mouths. The consequences on crime, Nevin found, occurred when poisoning victims became adolescents. Nevin does not say that lead is the only factor behind crime, but he says it is the biggest factor.

There are so many factors that contribute to the highly complex human activity of learning; this is but one of many. And, like most of them, it is entirely out of the control of a teacher.

Is that an excuse to accept mediocre teachers? Of course not. But it ought to shut up those who continue to harp on "bad" teachers as the primary cause of our society's ills. There's far more at work in our world than teachers unions.

11 comments:

Anonymous
said...

ROFL....well, maybe that explains all the crazy lead-soaked teachers backing insane NJEA policies. Of course, there is no reason why the allegedly lead poisoned psychopaths would be less susceptible to be weeded out in a voucher system lottery, either.

So, Jazzman, if the NJEA has all these righteous excuses, why do they suddenly, after decades of denial, have all these bills out there for tenure reform, teacher evaluations, merit pay, etc?

At any rate, this poverty/crumbling buildings/lead thing excuse is getting old. The bottom line is, the system and the people there in those inner cities are NOT getting it done. Time for change, hard, serious, real change, and the adults benefiting from the status quo have to be largely removed from the decisionmaking because they have shown their bias.

Oh, come one, on the NJEA timeline, crumbling buildings are soooo 2004. We spend a billion dollars to give them palaces, remember? Then it was teacher pay....Jazzman, how about a little research to tell us what percentile Abbott district teachers are paid at on the national average now? 94? 98? For what results?

Throwing money at a system with unmeasured, unmotivated employees clearly doesn't work (shock!)

The NJEA has run out of excuses for the failure of the current "system" in the inner cities. Now it is "poverty". That makes it nice and unaddressable. Time for change -- even they admit is through all their new tenure, merit pay and teacher evaluation bills. Greedy teachers like Jazzman stand alone now, as they should.

Note to the ignorant troll: the NJEA does not introduce bills to the state legislature. The NJEA is not a governmental body, it's not all powerful, it does not possess its own army, navy, air force or swat team. The NJEA may make proposals and suggestions, it does not make bills. That would be the job of state legislators.

Well, the trolls are restless and are looking to move to homes other than nj.com.

That's fine; keep my sitemeter spinning. Just don't expect to be taken seriously when you talk about "greedy teachers" or "failed schools."

If you care to argue with the many scholars I cite here - like Bruce Baker when you talk about "greedy teachers" or Howard Waimer when you mention "failed schools" -you are welcome to embarrass yourself.